About a year after the death of Theobald, Becket was by the King named, Archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England. Before his elevation to the throne, he had feigned to be wholly devoted to the interests of his royal master; but from the moment that his election had been made known to Alexander III., and especially after their meeting at the Council of Tours, his whole heart and soul became completely changed towards his sovereign. He returned from Tours to Canterbury, the professed, the inflexible, vassal of Rome, an enemy to his king and the laws of his country. Such was, and is, and ever must be, the spirit of popery. The intentions of the King to limit the growing power of the church were well known to Becket, who had presided in his privy council. But these intentions must be opposed at all costs; and thus the battle began.
The pretensions of the sacerdotal order as a separate caste of mankind, from the highest to the lowest, had become extremely perplexing to the civil government, and a great obstruction to its administration. The church demanded complete exemption from the control of secular law. It was boldly maintained, that the persons and property of the clergy should be placed beyond the reach of the ordinary tribunals, responsible only to their own superiors, and directly subject in life and property to the decrees of Rome. But lawlessness leads to violence; and the result of this papal aggression in England was a fearful increase of crime, to the immenent peril of the life and property of the subject. "For example," says our barrister, "it was proved that, since the commencement of the reign of Henry II., no fewer than a hundred murders had been committed by clerks in orders with almost absolute impunity. Rape, arson, robbery, theft, were excused or sheltered under the frock of the priest or the cowl of the monk; no penalties known to the 'anon law existed adequate to the repression and punishment of crimes of so deep a dye; and King Henry was at length driven to put the significant question, 'Whether the ancient laws and customs of the realm were to be observed or not.' "
The King, determined to bring these great questions to an issue, summoned a parliament at Westminster, and demanded a plain answer to his question. The answer given by the clergy to the King's question was that the ancient laws and customs of the realm ought to be observed and kept, "saying always the privileges of their order." This reply, although it had the appearance of an evasion, was really a refusal. The King, in a state of great consternation, broke up the assembly, left London, and began to deprive Becket of his power, and of the privilege and honor of educating his son. The bishops taking alarm, knowing the pride and power of Henry, entreated their primate either to withdraw or change the offensive answer. But he at first declared that if an angel from heaven should counsel such weakness, he would hold him accursed. He at length, however, yielded: some say through the influence of Pope Alexander, as Henry had threatened not to pay Peter's pence. And thus, all through the long quarrel, the pope sided with the king when he needed money, and with Becket when he could do without it.